truth, such blood had only hindered every step he’d ever taken.
Addicted to the sensory marvel of touch, Vail ran his fingertips along the black marble walls leading up to the elevator bays. The iron rings on his fingers clattered. His boots clomped nastily on the marble floor. The unfastened leather buckles on his right thigh swayed like banners.
Chipped black nail polish from a night he couldn’t remember caught the eye of an elderly security guard. Vail didn’t usually go in for mortal adornments, but he liked the grungy look of the polish and he wasn’t sure how to remove the clingy stuff.
He nodded at the security man, an elderly mortal with a thick crop of gray hair under his official cap. Running fingers through his hair, Vail then stopped before the elevator and punched in the digital code Rhys Hawkes had provided him.
Hawkes Associates was the last place he wanted to visit. He’d been here once, days after arriving in the mortal realm. He’d left with a new bank account, a new car and a new uncle—but no answers.
Now, three months later, he suspected what Hawkes wanted from him. Vail had no intention of working for his pseudostepfather, who was officially his uncle. But Rhys Hawkes—half vampire, half werewolf—was interesting enough for Vail to give him another chance.
He’d swing in, listen to what the centuries-old half-breed had to say, suck down the five-hundred-euro-a-bottle wine Hawkes kept on hand, then breeze off to the Lizard Lounge where he could slake his thirst for faery ichor. It wasn’t FaeryTown, but close enough.
The elevator doors slid open to reveal a lean young man with shoulder-length red hair, freckles and muscles that would intimidate a bouncer at a biker bar. The man nodded his head to the tunes blasting through his earbuds. He took one look at Vail and lunged for him, vising his hands about the vampire’s neck.
Not about to be taken down, and judging his strength equal to his attacker’s, Vail shoved the redhead against the wall. With a glance aside, they were both aware the security guard stood nearby, but the mortal with a pistol secured at his hip belt didn’t make a move. Smart guy.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Trystan Hawkes growled. He released his hold on Vail and tugged out the earbuds. The werewolf sneered, and spit, “Longtooth.”
“I love you, too, brother. Just come from talking to Daddy?”
“He’s not your father.” Tryst set back his shoulders and assumed a modicum of calm, but his adamant sneer told Vail what he wouldn’t say. He had already said it all, so why bother again? “You slumming with the normal folk?”
“Your daddy called me here.” Vail waggled a brow in a malicious tease. “Maybe he likes me better, eh?”
Tryst chuffed. “In your demented sparkly dreams.”
Vail did not sparkle, though the faery ichor he had imbibed had seeped through his pores and left a sheen on his skin. It had freaked out Tryst the first and only time they’d met right here in this building. Things had gone downhill from there.
“Glad to see there’s no love lost,” Vail countered. “Wouldn’t want my werewolf brother to go all mushy on me.”
He wanted to punch the bastard, but a frustrating sliver of need inhabiting his hardened black heart also wanted to pull the creep in for a brotherly hug. What a wib you are, Vail.
“You must be a force, brother,” Vail said. “But wait. You don’t run with a pack. Just a sad little omega wolf—”
The wolf wielded a sneak-attack high kick. Tryst’s hard rubber sole landed on Vail’s jaw and ratcheted back his skull on his spine. He saw stars for a few seconds.
Rubbing his jaw, Vail smirked. “Nice one.”
“You keep her insane,” Tryst said forcefully.
“She’s my mother, too. Like it or not,” Vail said, but he couldn’t get behind the retaliation. Did he keep her insane?
“You.” Tryst stabbed Vail in the chest. The wolf reeked of aggression. “Stay away from our family.”
“Seems your damned family keeps wanting to pull me in.”
“You have no right being here!”
“Yeah?” Vail slammed Tryst against the wall, pushing his anger through his brother’s shoulders. “I paid your father’s damn blood debt! A debt you should have paid.”
Trystan’s pale blue eyes went soft. He blinked and looked aside. Vail felt the tension in his brother’s muscles slacken under his grasp. He stepped away from the werewolf.
He’d spoken the truth. Neither could deny it. Tryst and Rhys Hawkes, and perhaps even his mother, Viviane, owed him more than they could ever give. But Vail knew the blood debt was one bargain for which he’d never know reciprocation.
“Gentlemen?”
The security guard knew they were brothers.
“It’s cool, Harley,” Tryst said to the guard. “All in jest. Brotherly love, and all that crap.”
The guard nodded, but his smile didn’t express amusement.
The lanky wolf nodded once, an odd acknowledgment, which either agreed that, indeed, he should have paid the debt himself, or that he didn’t care what Vail had suffered.
Vail didn’t have to guess at his brother’s meaning.
Tryst curtly waved him off and strode toward the entrance, calling, “Stay out of my life, vampire!”
Vail flipped off the werewolf and jumped inside the elevator as the doors closed. Releasing his breath, he then shook out his fists, working his tense muscles loose.
The surprise of learning, three months earlier, he’d a brother could never top the innate desire to connect with Tryst. Vail didn’t know where that feeling came from, but he’d fight it to the death, if he had to. Tryst hated him without knowing him. Vail had best accept that.
You are unwanted in Faery. You will be unwanted in the mortal realm.
Tough words to hear from his enemy. But not difficult to believe they were true.
Landing at the top floor, he assumed calm as he slicked back his hair and strode into the marble hallway. The place always smelled like leather polish, and that disturbed his respect for nature.
The receptionist, a petite, strawberry blonde with a sexy librarian’s penchant for tight, tailored clothing, adjusted her glasses at the sight of Vail and sat straighter behind her desk, offering a bright red cupid’s bow smile.
Vail winked at her, and she noticeably swooned.
Mortals. They were too easy.
Hawkes was on the phone, and gestured him inside the sparely furnished, large corner office.
Swinging by the bar, Vail nabbed a goblet of the expensive wine and sucked it down. It tasted like fruit warmed by the sun, but could never match any faery vintage.
He
